


THIS HERE IS NOT SINGING || I'M JUST SCREAMING IN TUNE

by gendernoncompliant



Category: Hades (Video Game 2018)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Erinyes, Gen, I got attached to her, I wanted to know more, Introspection, dealing with some cosmic trauma over here, extremely extremely mild spoilers for Tisiphone's ... arc?, look I just really love Tisiphone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:27:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26928106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gendernoncompliant/pseuds/gendernoncompliant
Summary: Alecto reveled in the violence, driven forward by a smug sadism. Megaera enjoyed it and resented it in equal measure. Tisiphone neverlikedit. Not in those words. She needed it. She starved without it: purpose amidst a meaningless infinity. As the centuries raged on, Tisiphone saw the underbelly of the world of man—and she bled it.Punishment was what she was born for. Built for. She took to it with fervor.Perhaps too much.
Relationships: Tisiphone & Alecto & Megaera (Hades Video Game), Tisiphone & Zagreus (Hades Video Game)
Comments: 30
Kudos: 130





	THIS HERE IS NOT SINGING || I'M JUST SCREAMING IN TUNE

**Author's Note:**

> Listen I just got so, so unreasonably attached to Tisiphone. She just pulled at my heart strings. I'm 60ish runs in now, somewhere between 20 and 30 of those were Tisiphone. I don't think there's much plot related stuff I haven't seen for her by now, but this game has surprised me before and it damn sure could do it again. Regardless, this has very little if any actual spoilers and is built largely on the back of character analysis, headcanons, and some Very surface level research into the myths behind the Furies.
> 
> [Also I changed Zagreus's whole 'happy' exchange to 'friends' because trying to get her to say 'happy' always felt kind of patronizing to me lmao]
> 
> Title from "Farewell Wanderlust" by The Amazing Devil

Tisiphone was not always like this.

She was born of blood. Fitting, then, that it would one day consume her.

The fact is, even in the depths of the Underworld, eternity is a meaninglessly decadent thing. Tisiphone never took to the phantom comforts that came from puppeting a mortal life. Food and finery could not sate her. Sex and intimacy brought no pleasure. She stepped into the role she and her sisters had been given and watched as the gods of the lower reaches looked upon all of them with disgust.

Only Megaera ever played house well enough to be welcomed inside of it. For Tisiphone and Alecto, there was Erebus—the dark and the dank and the freshly dead.

And then there was the fever pitch of justice. Of blood. Of rage.

Retribution scratched an itch that no other worldly indulgence could touch.

Alecto reveled in the violence, driven forward by a smug sadism. Megaera enjoyed it and resented it in equal measure. Tisiphone never _liked_ it. Not in those words. She needed it. She starved without it: purpose amidst a meaningless infinity. As the centuries raged on, Tisiphone saw the underbelly of the world of man—and she bled it.

Punishment was what she was born for. Built for. She took to it with fervor.

Perhaps too much.

To the mortals, she was always a monster even before she truly looked like one. By the time vengeance finished twisting her, she had no more reason to care what anyone—god nor man nor beast—would think of her. She was none of these things. She was a vessel. A weapon. A war.

* * *

The lines between centuries blur until they disappear. Tisiphone marks time by body count. The hours spent away from her calling are wasted, empty things. Often, she spends those hours with her sisters. Even more often, she spends them alone.

Alecto and Megaera talk about her as though she cannot hear them. She knows that they believe there to be no room in her skull for anything but death. Every shade and demigod in the Underworld seems to agree with them.

Their approval was never so holy as her purpose. So, she falls deeper into her work. She wrings last words from liar’s tongues, steals the hearts from unfaithful chests, makes killers beg for their own deaths.

It is not—

Good.

Morality is for mortals. Dignity, for the gods. She needs neither.

Tisiphone is an ancient and sturdy work ox, tilling the fields of the damned. In that way, her work is sacred.

And then—in the middle of an unbothered and unflinching eternity—suddenly there is Zagreus.

Zagreus is strange. Kind? Kind.

He’ll still kill her should she fail to fell him first. But he speaks to her. He speaks without fear. He speaks as though he believes there to be something inside of her still able to listen. (No other member of Hades’ court speaks to her like that. No other member of Hades’ court speaks to her, at all.)

She thinks of him, sometimes, in her moments of quiet in Erebus—thinks of him standing, relaxed and grinning at Tartarus’s gates.

 _Friend_ , he had said, when last they clashed blades. _Friend_.

She knew the meaning once.

These days, it escapes her—smoke through her fingers.

 _Friend_.

Is Zagreus a friend?

She sits on the edge of the Styx and rolls the word around her mouth.

“Ffffiend,” she stammers. The word contorts, comes out wrong—the same way _Zagreus_ would twist back into _murderer_ when he first taught her his name. “Fiend,” she tries again—the word surer, but no less wrong.

She dips her hand in the bloodied waters of the Styx. It’s thick and warm against her fingers: alive in a way so little of the Underworld truly is.

“Zzzahgrreus,” she murmurs. Her mouth forms the shapes easier than it once did. “Fff-frrr-friennd.”

She smiles, as much as her skeletal face allows her such a thing anymore.

“Zaaagrreusss. Fffriend.”

She’ll have to tell him when next they meet. Of course, he’ll still kill her. He always does. But perhaps, someday, she’ll scrape together the words to speak with him.

She thinks, maybe, she would like to speak with Zagreus again.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm marking this as complete for now, but there's a chance I might come back and add another chapter.  
> Anyway, I know this was a strange and niche fic, and I'm hugely grateful to any and everyone who stuck around to read it! I always respond to comments and would love to know what you think. Thank you! <3


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